Next Step On Benghazi: Special Committee

Now that we know that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton knew that Benghazi was a terrorist attack three hours after it started and that somebody in Washington barred sending reinforcements to the beleaguered consulate, it’s time to ask why. The best way to do that — the only way to do that — is through a special committee of the House of Representatives armed with subpoena power and focused solely on Benghazi.

Virginia Congressman Frank Wolf has already secured the signatures of 139 of his fellow Republican Congressmen (60 percent of the caucus) on a petition to House Speaker John Boehner to set up such a committee. We need to add our voices to the chorus.

Wolf says that if a special committee is not selected, there is a risk that the five committees with jurisdiction over aspects of the Benghazi affair will lose their focus on the scandal “in the scuffle” of their regular business. He warned that the regular committees “cannot sustain or bring to fruition the investigation.”

Senator Lindsay Graham, R-S.C., echoed Wolf’s views “I think you need a select committee because compartmentalizing the story of Benghazi has hurt getting to the truth and it is a very inefficient way,” Graham said. “Every time you’ve had sort of a national security disaster, like Iran-Contra or Watergate or a big thing like that, everybody pooled their resources and you could ask the same questions and you don’t have that compartmentalized approach.”

John McCain, R-AZ, added that with so many different committees, there is a real chance that things would fall between the cracks and that the overlapping jurisdictions will fail to investigate the scandal properly.

Please sign the attached petition to Boehner and your congressman to set up the special committee.